What is actual Oracle statement concerning running database in virtual environments

Pawl,  Oracle on VMware is supported, Oracle has a support statement in place for VMware on Metalink (MyOracleSupport) 249212.1 since November of last year Oracle supports RAC 11.2.02 and greater on vSphere  Thanks,  Eddy

Pawel,

Great question! Oracle like other companies reserves the right to have you reproduce an issue in a physical environment if they believe the cause of the problem is virtualization. There are several ways to architect your Oracle Virtual infrastructure to account for this possibility.

1. Consider the use of RDM (Raw Device Mapping) for your Oracle Virtual databases. The advantage in using RDM is that you can move from virtual to physical (V2P) quickly. Another advantage in using RDM is it works nicely with EMC storage array features like clones, snaps and replication. Do keep in mind that the use of RDM typically equates to more management.
2. Want to use VMFS? Consider using Oracle Data Guard and keeping its implementation physical. By keeping Oracle Data Guard physical the business can quickly replicate an database issue using Oracle Data Guard instead of impacting the production instance.
3. Some DBAs embrace dNFS, available in 11g, as it provides the ability to quickly clone the instance and replicate the issue in the physical environment plus, management of dNFS gives the DBA more control.

Considering RAC?

RAC and Virtualization provides some strong synergies. In particular, RDM and dNFS enable the capability to have mixed, both physical and virtual, nodes within a RAC cluster. Using the mixed node approach eliminates the Oracle support issue because you can point to the physical nodes when opening the ticket with support. Because I’m a big VMFS fanI would also like the architecture with a physical Oracle Data Guard instance in the case Oracle support demands reproduction of an issue in a physical environment. Here is a list of some of the EMC presentations at VMworld this year: http://goo.gl/sk8Ae

Consider looking at BCA2320 “vSphere 5: Best Practices for Oracle RAC virtualization” as it goes over many of the points discussed. I do want to leave you with this thoughts:

• For all known issues Oracle will not ask you to V2P
• Over the two years I have been presenting about Oracle Virtualization only 4 to 5 people have had to work through the V2P request with Oracle

Finally, VMware is going to partner with you to quickly resolve Oracle virtualization issues. Checkout this URL: http://www.vmware.com/support/policies/oracle-support.html

Quote from VMware:

“VMware Oracle Support provides customers the following new advantages as part of the existing Support and Subscription contract at no additional charge:

• Total ownership of Oracle Database technical issues reported to VMware Support
• Access to a team of Oracle DBA resources within VMware Support to troubleshoot related to Oracle Databases used as a data store or run within a VM
• Performance tuning and best practices related to Oracle Database used as a data store or run within a VM
• Faster resolution of technical issues in VMware environments via a TSANet collaborative support arrangement between VMware Support and Oracle Support “

Hope that helps but, please ask for any clarifications!

Thanks Sam, this is a great answer

Saying the above, you confirm that Oracle still requires that in case of unknown problem they will want to reproduce it on a phisical machine, don't you?

Keep in mind, it is only if they believe the problem is caused by vSphere.  The same policy is true if they believe the problem is caused by any other hardware vendor.  Incidently, as I understand it, VMware has had only 12 cases of this scenario, and in only 4 of them, did Oracle request that it be reproduced on a physical environment.

As I said some time ago on my blog, the MOS statement on VMware is disingenuous. While the statement:

     Oracle has not certified any of its products on VMware virtualized environments.

May be literally true, Oracle does not certify things like that. Oracle certifies one thing, and one thing only: Operating system distributions. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is certified to run Oracle. RHEL is certified to run under vSphere. I think you see the point.

Having said that, the rhetoric from Oracle sales and the behavior of Oracle support are very different. Oracle sales loves to bash vSphere and threaten all manner of dire consequences if you employ vSphere to virtualize Oracle. Actual customer experience with Oracle support is far different. I have heard very, very few incidents where Oracle asked a customer to duplicate an issue on physical hardware, and all of those issues were eventually resolved. Also, the actual question being asked by the customer cried out for such a response from Oracle: The question was obviously related to the underlying virtualized hardware. On questions which do not relate to the virtulized hardware (such as questions regarding query parsing and execution, for example), Oracle has not asked any customers to duplicate the issue on physical hardware from what I have heard (and I have talked to many, many customers on this).

There have been a lot of great comments on this thread and this is a topic I speak about frequently.  I just posted my position on Oracle support for VMware virtualized environents.